Thursday, January 06, 2005

'70s Blah

Was there some kind of economic boom or great prices on home remodeling products during the '70s? Seems like every badly remuddled/redecorated old house had its last update in the decade of avacado and harvest gold.

But wait - my economic boom theory is shot because all the '70s junk in our house is just that - the cheapest stuff money (very little money) can buy.

Take our hideous cabinet hinges, for example.

Surprisingly, you can still find the horrid things at Lowe's. Surely they're there just for people replacing the old stuff, right? Surely no one chooses these hinges anymore? Someone please reassure me that I'm not the only person who thinks these are monstrous.

Yet I can't find a way to get rid of them. Our homemade cabinets are configured so strangely nothing else will work!

Just as I was getting ready to say to hell with cabinets, hinges and everything involved with them, I saw these very hinges in the movie Meet the Fockers. The fictional Fockers (funny name aside) actually seem like really cool people. They live in a 100-year-old house, and I love their kitchen. It has yellow painted cabinets that look like dressed-up versions of my '70s cabinets. They (or the movie's designers, I should say) kept the ugly '70s hinges, and yet the room looks fabulous - quirky, warm, inviting.

Best of all, the kitchen fits with the rest of the house. That's all I'm asking for here - for people to walk into my kitchen and not feel like they've stepped through a time warp to the disco era.

Last night at Home Depot, I found the perfect molding for the cabinet faces. So that's one step in the right direction.

2 Comments:

Anonymous said...

Hahah - yes, these are hideous hinges. And yes, we kept them. Damned if I'm going to spend half my life figuring out how to use a different style without getting new doors! However, we did buy new white ones to blend in with our white cabinets. I hardly notice them now, thank god.